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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

91st Carnival of Genealogy, A Tribute To Women! - Emmie's Story (Part 1)

Emma Jane Owens Taylor lived her entire life in Rockcastle County, Kentucky and over the course of her almost 86 years many things happened in her life and the world around her.

During her childhood the Statue of Liberty was dedicated, the National American Woman Suffrage Association was founded, the last major battle of the Indian Wars was fought at Wounded Knee and Ellis Island became the chief point for immigration into the United States. She was 21 years old when the Wright brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk and 79 when John Glenn orbited the Earth. She lived through wars from the Spanish-American in 1898 to Vietnam in the 1960's and Presidents from Chester A. Arthur to Lyndon B. Johnson. Cars replaced horses as normal mode of travel yet she never owned or drove one.

Emmie (as most everyone called her) was born on April 16, 1882 in the small Rockcastle County community of Freedom to Madison C. and Cecilia Owens. Her parents had been married for almost 19 years and she was the youngest of seven children. Matt and Celia's home didn't have electricity or running water and Emmie spent most of her life without those conveniences.

To say Emmie was the youngest child doesn't really explain that she was truly the baby of the family. Most of her siblings were much older than her. Elizabeth was married two years before Emmie was born and had a son that was older than her. Sally and George were both married by the time she was five years old. Another sibling died as an infant eight years before she was born so for most of her childhood only her brothers, Wesley and Dave (who were 10 and 7 years older than her), were at home with her and their parents.

Emmie was 17 years old when she married John Cook Taylor on January 16, 1900 at her parents home in Freedom and gained an instant family. John was 36 years old, had been married twice before and was raising two daughters, Gracie and Susie. John married, Sarah A. "Sally" Ramsey on June 8, 1885 and she died in 1892. When John married Emmie, Gracie was 13 years old and Susie was 10 but they had both been under six when their mother died. John married Margaret Frances "Fannie" Warren on August 22, 1894. They had a son, Bill, but their marriage ended in divorce. Fannie moved to Kansas along with her parents and other family members when Bill was still very young and John didn't see his son again for many years.

Website News

My website at www.lfmccauley.com underwent a complete redesign and move to a different platform effective 5 Jul 2014, and this blog moved to the new location. The old family tree pedigree pages have been deleted, which means older posts here will have broken links that won't be fixed anytime soon. Sorry for any inconvenience. Hope the new site is worth it. Please follow me at www.lfmccauley.com/blog.